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Disability Housing Request

Disability Services works closely with Residential Life & Housing to respond to the individual needs of Barnard students with disabilities.

Housing options for Barnard students include rooms in traditional corridor-style and apartment suite-style residence halls in the neighborhood surrounding campus. All residential Barnard students are expected to follow College policies as well as College housing policies and procedures developed by the Office of Residential Life and Housing.

Generally all incoming first year students who wish to live on campus (including those with diagnosed disabilities) live in the First Year Focus area (consisting of mostly multiple occupancy rooms in traditional corridor-style residence halls with a mandatory meal plan in mostly non-air conditioned buildings). Transfer and visiting students are housed based on availability, and are generallu placed in multiple occuapancy rooms. Roommate assignments are based on matching questions on the housing application and specific roommates can be requested on the Disability Housing Accommodation Request Form. Continuing students may include housing preferences as part of their disability housing accommodation request; however, many factors including requested accommodations and class year are taken into consideration when reviewing those requests. Sophomores generally live in multiple occupancy rooms.

Procedures for Requesting Disability Housing Accommodations

Barnard ODS is able to begin accepting the 2018-2019 Pre-Lottery Forms as of 11/20/17. Please read the below instructions. Additional forms/deadlines will be posted for students to apply for disability housing accommodations post-lottery for 2018-2019 for students not able to select a room at lottery that met their needs who did not apply for a housing accommodation before lottery as well as new incoming first year students, transfer students, and students returning from a leave of absence at later dates. Please check this page on the website for updates!

Please read the instructions for applying in its entirety BEFORE filling out the 2018-2019 Pre-Lottery Disability Housing Accommodation Request Form (see right hand side of the ODS webpage for Google Form) to ensure you are eligible and filling out the correct form for your needs. If you have any questions, please contact ODS staff to discuss. If you need to update your request after submission, please email us at ods@barnard.edu or call us with the information you need to update. Please do not submit this form more than once. You will receive a receipt of your responses per our settings. It's best to submit this form using Google Chrome as your browser.

All students seeking disability housing accommodations for their room assignment for the 2018-2019 school year must first be registered with ODS and will need to fill out this form, supply supporting documentation from their doctor or treating clinician to ods@barnard.edu or via fax at 212-280-8768**, and follow all requirements as outlined on our website by the posted deadlines: https://www.barnard.edu/disabilityservices/resources/manual-forms/disabi...
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All ODS students must submit their own Disability Housing Accommodation Request in order to be accommodated. Please do not rely on another ODS student to pull you in to their Pre-Lottery assignment as we cannot guarantee that your needs will be met that way OR that the other student will accept the Pre-Lottery assignment, which can leave you without a placement pre-lottery.

**You may submit this form and your documentation separately if you are still working on your documentation. There will be a question to indicate how the documentation is being submitted.

***Forms and documentation received after the below deadlines will be reviewed, however, based on the timeframes for Room Selection set by the College there may be less ability to accommodate a student's request outside of these timeframes. If you are having difficulty meeting the deadline, please contact ODS by email at ods@barnard.edu so that we are aware and can better advise you on your particular situation.

Deadlines:
1) Current Barnard Students who are living on campus Spring '18 or are studying abroad who lived on campus immediately prior to going abroad for Spring '18 - Friday, January 5th, 2018 at 5pm.
2) Columbia Students hoping to live at Barnard for Spring '18 - Friday, January 5th, 2018 at 5pm.
3) New Transfer Barnard Students or Students returning from a leave of absence who are currently living on campus in Spring '18 - Monday, January 22nd, 2018 at 5pm (1 week after classes begin Spring '18).

Timeframes for ODS Review and Room Selection Guidelines:
1) ODS staff to review the request and schedule Disability Housing Accommodation Committee Meetings (2 weeks).
2) Disability Housing Accommodation Committee Meetings (2-3 weeks to review all requests).
3) ODS staff/Res Life staff meet to finalize placements (1-2 weeks).
4) Placement decisions to be sent to students by Friday, 2/23/18.
5) Students are given 1 week to accept or decline Pre-Lottery assignment. Those who timely decline are eligible to participate in the Housing Lottery.
6) Room Selection Registration takes place (1pm Wed, 2/28/18 through 1pm Wed, 3/7/18). ALL STUDENT SEEKING CAMPUS HOUSING FOR ACADEMIC YEAR 2018-2019 MUST REGISTER FOR ROOM SELECTION, including students participating in the Housing Lottery and students who accepted an ODS Pre-Lottery assignment or are planning on applying at a later date for a Disability Housing Accommodation through ODS.
7) Housing Lottery for students who did not accept an ODS placement or who did not apply for an accommodation prior to the Pre-Lottery deadline (specific dates pending -usually follows spring break).

*Please note that we will review your building preferences when determining placement upon eligibility for housing accommodations, however, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to place you in your preferred building as placements are determined based on a variety of factors including types of requested accommodations, which may not be available in all buildings.

Incoming Fall '18 First year students, Fall '18 Transfer Students, or Students going through readmission for Fall 2018 will have a different deadline and form to be posted when available since those students would not be eligible to participate in the Housing Lottery or Room Selection during Spring '18.

SPRING 2018 Requests: Students living on campus who are seeking either a new accommodation OR a Room change from their current assigned space for Spring 2018: Room changes are based on available space, so the College cannot guarantee that specific rooms, room types, and/or buildings will be available. Please fill out the 2017-2018 Disability Housing Accommodation Request Form by submitting the google form and select "Room Change" option under "Student Status", so that ODS can review whether any available spaces match your needs: https://goo.gl/forms/mejryCbkalh7sOd72.

Forms submitted without sending in documentation will not be eligible for housing accommodations.

Students not living on campus during Spring '18 are not eligible to participate in the Room Selection Process and therefore cannot be granted an accommodation through the Pre-Lottery Disability Housing Process.

Students not living on campus during Spring '18, but who wish to live in campus housing and plan to request a disability housing accommodation for Academic Year 2018-2019 should submit a Housing Application to Residential Life AND a Disability Housing Accommodation Request Form by June 1, 2018. Housing assignments and housing accommodations will be made pending availability following receipt of housing cancellations over the summer. A new form will be posted on the ODS website following the Pre-Lottery Disability Housing Accommodation Process to avoid confusion in which form to fill out.

All students applying for disability housing accommodations must register with the Office of Disability Services by having an intake meeting and supplying ODS with supporting documentation of their need for a housing accommodation from a current doctor or treatment provider prior to their respective deadline. Please contact ODS at 212-854-4634 if you are not registered yet to fill out our student application and then we will contact you to schedule your intake meeting.

Students must submit disability documentation that follows the ODS Disability Documentation Guidelines (DDG) requirements (http://barnard.edu/disabilityservices/resources/manual-forms/disability-...). Please remember that documentation must meet the guidelines to be accepted. Documentation must be recent within the past 2 months for housing applications; updated and/or additional documentation may be required on a case by case basis. It is important that the documentation establish a direct connection between the disability and the requested housing accommodation(s). Students with Service Animals or requesting permission to have a Support Animal within their designated housing assignment should refer to Service and Support Animal Policy: the https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/service_and_support_animal_polic...

Pull-in's and ODS Group Clarifications

On the Request form, continuing students during the pre-Room Selection phase of ODS housing may specify 1 requested pull-in (either roommate or suitemate). We do allow ODS students to group themselves in mutually requested groups. This means that if you are going through ODS housing and want to have a non-ODS student as your pull-in you may also request to live in the same group as an ODS student who is going through ODS housing as well. You may not select more than 1 pull-in unless you are forming a group with another ODS student going through ODS housing. Students who are opting to group themselves should discuss building preferences and their accommodation needs ahead of time as we will review any buildings selected by either ODS student going through ODS housing as applicable for the group. We may not be able to accommodate both ODS students' needs within the same building and in that case we would not be able to group you together. ODS students who are not eligible for housing accommodations may not be selected as a suitemate unless that student is the only pull-in.

The selected pull-in OR ODS grouping request must be requested when submitting the form; permission for a specific roommate or suitemate cannot be provided after accommodations have been granted and/or room assignments made.

Requests for accommodations after the deadlines will typically only be considered for newly diagnosed disabilities.

The Disability Housing Committee evaluates housing applications and the necessity of the requested accommodations(s). The Committee includes staff from the Office of Disability Services, Counseling Services, Residential Life & Housing and Primary Care Health Services.

Residential Life List for Assistance in Emergency Evacuations

All students are expected to evacuate immediately upon the sounding of the building fire alarm. Students with disabilities who need assistance evacuating from their residence hall in the event of a fire alarm, should meet with an ODS staff member and ask to be placed on the list for assistance in emergency evacuations that Residential Life shares with Public Safety. If you are unsure if you need to be on this list, please contact ODS and staff can assist you in determining the next steps.

If you do not have a physical, visual, or hearing disability, but also still have a need for assistance in an emergency situation (i.e. unable to hear fire alarm as a heavy sleeper), please contact ODS to discuss. Students with temporary disabilities are also strongly encouraged to be in touch with ODS if they need to be placed on the list for assistance in emergency evacuations that Residential Life shares with Public Safety if there is any anticipation of difficulty with exiting the residence hall in the event of an emergency.

All students unable to self-evacuate must call Barnard Security at (212) 854-3362 at the sounding of a fire alarm and provide their name and location. In the event of an actual life-safety emergency which necessitates total evacuation, trained New York City Fire Department (NYFD) personnel will be dispatched and take responsibility.